I picked up this book to read during the Mexico trip, based on Marc Andreesen’s long blog on his top science fiction picks. If one of the primary creators of today’s technological world can’t be trusted for science fiction, who can? Besides, he’s a big Robert Heinlein fan.
There is one word for Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon. Brutal.
While there is a lot of war/crime/espionage fiction in the world that would fit that description, 1) there is very little science fiction in that category and 2) none of the other genre’s can create in quite the same way.
Morgan’s mastery is clear. In the middle of the book, Takeshi Kovacs makes an assault on an Oakland clinic 500 years in the future. Taken at face value, the scene could be in any Terminator movie or any of a dozen cops-and-bad-guys adventure. The brutality of the scene is entirely taken up in the 200 pages of prelude and setting that Morgan has created. Truly awesome.
The book loses some points for its lack of dynamic characters, it’s one-trick pony vision of future technology, as well as a prose style I found too deep and unedited toward the end. But I picked up the sequel, Broken Angels, to read immediately after I finished Altered Carbon.
Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan